Description

Liszt started writing his two Ballades in 1845��, during a time of personal turmoil. The successful virtuoso increasingly saw himself as a composer who strove after formal clarity, as shown by the B minor sonata that was also composed in 1853. When Liszt began work on the first Ballade, he had just separated from his mistress of many years, Marie Comtesse d��Agoult. He called the first sketches for the work Derni��res Illusions. A better-known work is the second Ballade in B minor, with whose ending hestruggled (the two fortissimo endings in Liszt��s autograph have been pu blished for the first time in the appendix to this edition). Edited by Ernst-G��nter Heinemann and Rena Charnin Mueller with fingerings by Andreas Groethuysen.